A Sea Queen's Sailing

by Charles W. Whistler

"For us Norse folk," she said, "there is one word needed, perhaps. I heard my men cry the last farewell to Thorwald as the ship left the shore. The temple rites were long over. All that was due to a son of Odin has been done."

Now, it is needless for me to say that I could not tell all that had passed. All I had to say was that Gerda was content with our plan, and all three of us were somewhat more easy in our minds. It had been by no means so certain that she would be so.

Now we made no more delay, but quietly and reverently Bertric showed us how to make all ready for such a sea burial as he had many a time seen before. So it was not long before the old king lay with his feet toward the sea on the fathom of planking which we had lowered from where it was made to unship for a gangway amidships for shore-going and the like. We had set him so that it needed but to raise the inboard end of this planking when the time came that he should pass from his ship to his last resting in the quiet water; and he was still in all his arms, with his hands clasped on the hilt of his sword beneath the shield which covered his breast, but now shrouded in the new sail of one of his boats in the seaman's way.

At this time the fog was thinning somewhat, and the low sun seemed likely to break through it now and then. It was very still all round us, for there was no sound of ripple at the bows or wash of water alongside, and the swell which lifted us did not break. Only there was the little creaking of the yard and the light beating of the idle sail against the mast as the ship rolled and swung to the swell. Some little draught of wind, or the send of the waves, had set her bows to it, and she rode the water like a sea bird at rest.

Gerda came at a word when all was ready, and stood beside us with clasped hands. And so for a little time we four stood with a space between us and the head of that rough sea bier, and over against us beyond it the open gangway and the heaving, gray water, which now and then rose slowly and evenly almost to the deck level and again sank away. It was almost as if, when the end had come, that we waited for some signal which there was none to give.

What those two of the other faith had said to one another I do not know; but for a little time they stood with bare, bent heads as in one accord, and I saw them make their holy sign on their breasts before they moved. Then Bertric signed to me that I should help him lift the inboard end of the planking, and we stepped forward together and bent to do so. Even as my hands touched the wood there came a sudden rushing, and I felt a new lift of the ship, and into the open gangway poured the head of a great, still wave, flooding the deck around our feet, and hiding in its smother of white foam and green water that which lay before us, so that we must needs start back hastily. The ship lurched and righted herself, and the wave was gone. Gone, too, was the old king--without help of ours. The sea he loved had taken him, drawing him softly to itself with the ebb of the water from the deck, and covering the place alongside, where I had feared for Gerda to see the dull splash and eddy of the end, with a pall of snow-white foam.

For a long moment we stood motionless, half terrified. Neither before this had any sea come on board since we lowered the gunwale nor did any come afterward. Gerda clutched my arm, swaying with the ship, and then she cried in a strange voice:

"It is Aegir! Aegir himself who has taken him!"

That was in my mind also, and no wonder. The happening seemed plainly beyond the natural. I turned to Gerda, fearing lest she should be over terrified, and saw her staring with wide eyes into the mists across that sea grave, wondering; and then of a sudden she pointed, and cried once more:

"Look! what is yonder? Look!"